CHAPTER 14
SAKKAYA (Sa or santo, that means which really exists, and Kaya, aggregate) means the five aggregates which really exists. Ditthi means “wrong view”. Those two words constitute Sakkaya Ditthi.
How and in what manner does the Wrong View arises? When Pancakkhandha is viewed and taken as personality Ego, I or Me; his is called the Wrong View. Wrong View arises whenever Khandha is taken as personality or when the idea of Ego, Soul, Self or I, comes in. Ditthi is the most deleterious and harmful offence in the thirty one planes of existence. The Buddha says, “Vijjanam Bhikkhve Miccha Ditthi Paramani”. This means of all the offences Miccha Ditthi (the Wrong View) is the most deleterious and harmful.
In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha says, “Twenty kinds of Sakkaya Ditthi can never lead a being to the Sugati but instead it can lead him down to Duggati (Apaya Bhumi). As the pebbles of the size of a pea can never float on the water, so never could a being with Sakkaya Ditthi come up and float on the surface of Samsara.
Sakkaya Ditthi is the Breeding and the birth place of the sixty two kinds of Ditthi. Depending on Sakkaya Ditthi all kinds of Ditthi arise, hence the Buddha said, “Satthiya Viya Omatho, Dashyamanova matthake; Sakkaya Pahanaya, Sato Bhikkhu Paribbhaje”. It means, as a man who has caught fire on his head, and being pierced by a spear on the chest so the Bhikkhu who is mindful should try to eliminate Sakkaya Ditthi with all haste.
If a man has Sakkaya Ditthi, there is no doubt that he may attain Sugati Bhumi (pleasurable abode) by doing Dana, Sila, Bhavana, but he could never realise Magga and Phala. He who has Sakkaya Ditthi, has no compunction to commit matricide, patricide or even shed the blood of the Buddhha. There is no Akusala Dhamma for him which he does not dare to do. It was this Sakkaya Ditthi which prompted Devadatta to try an assasinate the Buddha by all conceivable means in order to make himself the Buddha.
Prince Ajatasatu being ill advised by Devadatta into believing that he could never become a king, so long as his father Kinf Bimbisara was alive, and being so self-conscious to become a king himslef in his youth, that he had his father killed. It was the Sakkya Ditthi which caused Paticari (a ricj man’s daughter) to be in the state of deranged mentality. Being led by wrong view, after misconstruing and wrongly conceiving Pancakkhandha as husband, son, daughter, father and mother, she reached the state of insanity and consequently became an acute maniac beyond control.
CHAPTER 14